The 1997 Jiashi swarm earthquakes are relocated using the "master event" method improved by the authors. From the relocated hypocenters and focal mechanisms of the earthquakes, it is inferred that a pair of echelon faults, striking in northern north-west direction, right-step allocated and right-laterally moved, may exist in the earthquake swarm region. The composite focal mechanism obtained by analyzing the data of 2177 P-wave first motion polarities indicates that both mean P- and T-axis are horizontal, orienting in N19°E and N110°E respectively, and the mean B-axis is nearly vertical. The co-seismic deformation caused by this earthquake swarm is compressive nearly in North-South and extensional nearly in East-West. Obviously low earthquake stress drops are found via analyzing the source spectra of the swarm earthquakes, which may be one of the main reasons why the Jiashi earthquake swarm has lasted for a long period of time. The interaction between discontinuous segments of the echelon fault has been discussed. The result indicates that the stress drop is usually low for the earthquakes occurring on the right step echelon faults.
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